Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

Former president Lula out of jail… again

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Liberty, Politics , ,

Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is currently considered innocent and can run for president in 2022 if he wishes. Lula was arrested in April 2018 under Operation Car Wash, conducted by judge Sérgio Moro in the Brazilian southern city of Curitiba, in the state of Paraná. In November 2019, the Supreme Federal Court ruled that incarcerations with pending appeals were unlawful and Lula was released from prison as a result. Yesterday, March 8, 2021, the Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin ruled that all Lula’s convictions must be nullified because Lula was tried by a court that did not have proper jurisdiction over his case. This is so complicated that I had to check in Wikipedia to make sure I’m getting the basic facts straight.

Now I wonder: what changed between April 2018 and November 2019? And what changed yesterday? Don’t know! Was Lula illegally arrested in April 2018? What kind of country is this, in which people are arrested unlawfully?! Why it took Edson Fachin almost three years to realize that Sérgio Moro had no jurisdiction in this case?! Is Brazilian law really so complicated that it takes even to a supreme court judge three years to realize that something is wrong? What is going to happen to Lula now? After all, he was in jail unlawfully for more than a year! But mind this: Edson Fachin didn’t say that Lula is innocent! He said that Sérgio Moro had no jurisdiction to judge him. Theoretically, Lula can be judged by a new court, with the same proofs, and be condemned… again. You know, Seinfeld was right:

“What are lawyers, really? To me a lawyer is basically the person that knows the rules of the country. We’re all throwing the dice, playing the game, moving our pieces around the board, but if there’s a problem, the lawyer is the only person that has read the inside of the top of the box. I think one of the fun things for them is to say, ‘objection.’ ‘Objection! Objection, Your Honor.’ Objection, of course, is the adult version of, ‘’fraid not.’ To which the judge can say two things, he can say, ‘overruled’ which is the adult version of ‘’fraid so,’ or he could say, ‘sustained,’ which is the adult version of ‘Duh.’”

I’m afraid that in the case of Brazil, if the supreme court judges don’t quite understand the rules of the game, neither can I.

Edge of Democracy in Brazil?

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, History, Liberty, Philosophy , , ,

The past few days Brazilian internet was packed with commentaries about The Edge of Democracy (Portuguese: Democracia em Vertigem), a 2019 Brazilian documentary film directed by Petra Costa that was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 92nd Academy Awards (and lost). To be honest, I didn’t watch this movie and I’m not planning to. My life is already quite busy as it is. However, judging by the trailer and by what people were saying, “The film follows the political past of the filmmaker in a personal and intimate way, in context with the first term of President Lula until the events leading to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, analyzing the rise and fall of both presidents and the consequent sociopolitical crisis that swept the country. The arrest of Lula paved the way for the rise of Jair Bolsonaro and his eventual presidency” (from Wikipedia). Vox says this: “Filmmaker Petra Costa grew up in a politically involved family in Brazil, and that’s her starting point for The Edge of Democracy, in which she traces recent developments in Brazilian politics and shows how the country moved so quickly from a fledgling democracy toward far-right authoritarianism”. So, it seems to me that the movie is about how Brazil was becoming a vibrant democracy under the rule of the Workers’ Party and now it’s becoming a far-right autocracy. Judging by that, these are some thoughts on how I see democracy in recent and past Brazilian history.

Brazil was a Portuguese colony, but this was different from America being an English colony. There were not thirteen colonies in Brazil. Portugal’s oversight of Brazil was stronger than England’s over America. There was basically no space for local rule in Brazil. Therefore, Brazil came from its colonial days with basically no self-government experience.

Brazil became independent from Portugal in 1822. But again, this was different from America’s independence. In 1808 the Portuguese royal family came to Brazil, running away from Napoleon. Brazil became a United Kingdom with Portugal in 1815. Dom João VI, the Portuguese king, gave in to the court’s pressure and went back to Portugal in the early 1820s. However, he left his son Dom Pedro I as prince regent in Brazil. And at this Pedro declared Brazil’s independence in 1822.

Dom Pedro I was crowned as Emperor of Brazil and ruled until 1831. Suffering multiple pressures, he went back to Portugal like his father before him. From 1831 to 1840 Brazil was ruled by several regents. In 1840 Dom Pedro I’s son, Dom Pedro II, became emperor. He ruled until 1889, when he was deposed by a military coup.

Brazil has been a republic ever since, but not like America. We didn’t simply have presidential elections every four years. The first two Brazilian presidents were virtually military dictators. Civilians came to power in 1894 and ruled until 1930, but these were not exactly democratic times. Mostly the country was ruled by coffee oligarchs.

The last of these coffee planter presidents ruled until 1930. Then Getúlio Vargas came to power in a coup. He ruled until 1945. Vargas was deposed but continued to be a major political player. So much so, that he came to the presidency in the 1950s. He committed suicide in 1954, while still in office. Basically, the country was still under Vargas’ shadow from 1945 to 1964. And that’s when the military came to power.

Brazil was under military governments from 1964 to 1985. This is the historical period that people tend to remember and refer to the most. The military came to power because the population asked them to. There was a great fear of communism, and the army would theoretically defend Brazil against this. I am not saying that this fear was justified or that military governments was the right solution, but this is how most people thought at that time.

The last military president surrendered power in 1985. Since then, Brazil has been ruled by civilians. The Workers’ Party (or Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT, in Portuguese) became one of the most competitive political forces in Brazil in this period. Officially founded in 1980, it always had Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as one of its main leaders. The Workers’ Party always presented itself as broadly leftist, without further specification. Among its founders were sympathizers of Roman Catholic Liberation Theology, radical socialists who defended armed opposition to the dictatorship, and union workers (Lula among them).

Lula was presidential candidate in 1989, 1994 and 1998, always coming in second place with about 30% of the votes. During those years Lula and the Workers’ Party were radically opposed to the economic reforms Brazil was going through. Like in other countries, Brazil was suffering from the crumbling of years of populism. The Washington Consensus was the order of the day, but the Workers’ Party was against everything it called “neoliberalism”. “Out with FHC (Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Brazil’s president from 1995 to 2002) and the IMF” was their usual chant. The party even defended not paying Brazil’s staggering international debts. Lula still hung out with socialist leaders, mostly Fidel Castro. However, in 2002 he presented a different platform. Advised by advertising professional and political strategist Duda Mendonça, he announced that, if elected president, he wouldn’t undo FHC’s economic reforms. Plagued by several international economic crises (Mexico, Asia, Russia, Argentina), Brazil was having a hard time entering the free-market world. The once highly popular FHC came out from office with low popularity. The combination of these factors (FHC’s low popularity at the time and Lula’s promise to pursue a less radical path) opened the way for the Workers’ Party to come to Brazil’s presidency.

In the first years of his government Lula was true to his promise. He not only maintained but deepened FHC’s economic reforms. After the initial shocks, Brazil slowly reacted to the free-market medicine and the economy started to grow. This guaranteed Lula’s reelection in 2006, although by then major corruption scandals already surrounded his presidency, centrally the Mensalão scandal. This scandal broke in 2005 when it was discovered that the Workers’ Party gave monthly payments to several deputies from other parties to vote for legislation that was favored by the ruling party. Although the investigations implicated some of Lula’s closest allies, the president himself managed to get off scot-free.

Lula’s second term in office marked a change from the first and even from his party’s historical stand up until then. The Workers’ Party since its inception always posed as a firm adversary to corruption. Political corruption is hardly something new in Brazil. Going back to the beginning of this text, one of Brazil’s historical problems has always been the difficulty of separating public and private. This was ironically famously observed by Raymundo Faoro, one of the Workers’ Party initial supporters. In Donos do Poder (Owners of the Power) Faoro observed that Brazil has always been led by ruling elites who saw public property as their property. In this scenario the very idea of corruption becomes fuzzy since ruling elites believe they are not stealing – they are simply using what is rightly theirs! It is against this scenario that Faoro and others proposed a technocrat professional bureaucracy. After the Mensalão scandal, however, the Workers’ Party became cynical towards corruption. Their usual response to it became to say that previous governments also did it, that they didn’t invent corruption or simply to say that Lula was an innocent man being politically persecuted by the elites. In sum, Workers’ Party officials and supporters were divided between those who, while not denying the veracity of the corruption scandals, tried to minimize it, and those who completely denied it.

Lula left his second term in office still high on popularity. So much so that he was able to elect his successor, Dilma Rousseff. Dilma, however, would face several difficulties in her presidency. Number one, although somewhat forgotten by the general public, the corruption scandals were still a reality that would surface every now and then. Second, Brazil was suffering the effects of the 2008 world economic crisis. Finally, Dilma was herself a shamefully inept leader.

As I mentioned before, Lula came to power in 2003 mainly because he and others in the Workers’ Party were able to (partially) come to terms with the fact that the Washington Consensus is called a consensus for a reason: as much as some things in political economy are debatable, some are not – centrally, you can’t spend money that you don’t have forever. Dilma would have none of that. Although she is famously very confused in the way she speaks, all things point to the fact that Dilma is trapped in a painfully outdated Keynesian mentality. Trapped in this mentality, she overspent – against Brazilian law. For this reason, she was impeached.

Dilma’s impeachment was followed by a short government of her vice-president, Michel Temer, and now the country is governed by Jair Messias Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro was for many years an obscure politician from Rio de Janeiro, elected mostly to corporately defend the military as workmen. Almost an unofficial union leader for soldiers. Bolsonaro, however, is also an admirer of the Brazilian army in general. He graduated from Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras, something akin to West Point. As a reformed army captain, he fiercely believes that the military did save Brazil from communism in the 1960s. As I mentioned before, that’s exactly what people in the 1960s believed. I’m not saying that they were right.

Ironically, leftists greatly benefited from the military governments of the 1960s-1980s. The guerrilla in Brazil’s countryside was crushed by the armed forces and the urban armed resistance was mostly weak and disorganized. Some important leaders in the Workers’ Party came precisely from these two. But Brazilian armed forces were shamefully unprepared to fight a cultural war. While some sectors of the left were still following Mao Zedong or Che Guevara, trying to reach power by force, others were reading Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, following a more cultural path to power.

In any case, the left was very good at posing as victims. In the years that followed the military governments, there was a tendency to romanticize the resistance. Some people, artists and politicians, made whole careers on that. To be “persecuted by the dictatorship” became a major asset.

But the truth is that Brazilian left never fought for democracy. This isn’t meant to depreciate them. It’s just a statement of fact. Actually, what I meant in the first paragraphs was to show that Brazil has a very weak democratic tradition. Beginning very early in the 20th century, shortly after the Russian Revolution, communists tried to take power in Brazil by force. Again, this is just a statement of fact. This continued up to the early 1960s when, fueled by Cold War fear (some might say paranoia, I don’t really mind), people begged the armed forces to take power. Has it not lasted for so long, the military governments would probably have been long forgotten or taken as something positive. But because they lasted for so long, the left was able to play its cards and pose as democratic victims of an authoritarian regime.

And this is, I believe, how we come to 2020. Bolsonaro has, I believe, a wrong idea about the military governments. Even if they were truly necessary to avoid a communist coup, they shouldn’t have lasted for so long. Besides that, the military presidents had their ups and downs in how they governed the country. Bolsonaro mostly can’t see that. The left, on the other hand, romanticizes the dictatorship. Some of them seem to actually believe in the lie that they were fighting for democracy. They were not. Had they won the war against the military forces, Brazil would have become something akin to Castro’s Cuba or Mao’s China. Had the military not won against the guerrillas, Brazil would have something akin to Colombia’s FARCs.

In sum, Brazil is still trapped in things that happened in the 1960s. Socialists, of course, wanted a big state. That’s basically their ideology. Ironically, in order to fight that, the military built an equally gigantic state. Petra Costa’s family got rich, fabulously rich, during the military governments. Today her family has contracts with the Workers’ Party. Some things change, but others remain the same: some people don’t care if governments are red or blue. All they care about is the green of the dollars. And a smaller state would be bad business for this kind of people.

Jair Bolsonaro suffers a knife attack.

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Politics , , , , , , ,

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s presidential candidate and leader in opinion polls, suffers a knife attack. According to close sources, his condition is grave. The aggressor is a militant of the Workers Party of Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro’s supporters resisted the temptation to lynch and directed the attacker to the police. Dilma Rousseff stated that Bolsonaro was the victim of his own hate speech. It is the left blaming the victim and justifying the aggressor. This is the “peace and love” left.

Explaining current Brazilian politics to known-Brazilians and why I believe this is time for optimism

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, History , , , , , , , ,

It seems that many observers believe that Brazil’s current political situation is one of instability and uncertainty. Since the mid-1990s the national political scene has been dominated by two parties: the Worker’s Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT, in Portuguese) and PSDB. Now, with the main leader of the PT imprisoned – former president Lula da Silva – the PSDB also seems to have lost its rationale. It is clear that this party never had faithful voters, only an anti-PT mass who saw in it the only viable alternative. Given these factors, it is true that a political cycle that began in the 1990s is coming to an end, but far from being a moment of uncertainty and pessimism, this may be the most fruitful moment in the country’s history, as it seems that finally classical liberalism is being vindicated in Brazil.

Brazil began its political history as a semi-parliamentary monarchy. As one observer of the time put it, the country had a “backward parliamentarism”: instead of parliament controlling the monarch, it was the emperor who controlled parliament. Moreover, the Brazilian economy was extremely based on slavery. In theory, Brazil was politically and economically a liberal country. In practice, it was politically and economically a country controlled by oligarchies.

With the proclamation of the republic in 1889, little changed. The country continued to be theoretically a liberal country, with a constitution strongly influenced by the North American one and a tendency to industrialization. In practice, however, Brazil continued to be politically and economically dominated by oligarchic interests.

The republic instituted in 1889 was overthrown in 1930 by Getúlio Vargas. Vargas was president from 1930 to 1945, and his political circle continued to dominate the country until 1964. Once again, political language was often liberal, but in practice the country was dominated by sectorial interests.

Vargas committed suicide in 1954, and his political successors failed to account for the instability the country went through after World War II. The Soviet Union had been trying to infiltrate Brazil since the 1920s, and this was intensified with the Cold War. The communist influence, coupled with the megalomaniacal administrative inability of Vargas and his successors, led the country to such an instability that the population in weight clamored for the military to seize power in 1964.

The military that governed Brazil between 1964 and 1985 were influenced mainly by positivism. In simple terms, they were convinced they could run the country like a barracks. For them, the motto “order and progress” written on the Brazilian flag was taken very literally. One great irony in this is that Auguste Comte’s positivism and Karl Marx’s communism are almost twin brothers, products of the same anti-liberal mentality of the mid-19th century. The result was that Brazilian economic policy for much of the military period was not so different from that of the Soviet Union at many points in its history: based on central planning, this policy produced spectacular immediate results (the period of the “Brazilian miracle” in the early 1970s), but also resulted in the economic catastrophe of the 1980s.

However, the worst consequence of the military governments was not in the economy but in the political culture. The military fought against communism in a superficial way, overpowering only the guerrillas and terrorist groups that engaged in armed struggle. But in the meantime, many communists turned to cultural warfare, joining schools, universities, newsrooms, and even churches. The result is that Brazilian intellectual life was taken over by communism.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, elected president in 1994, is an important Brazilian intellectual. Although not an orthodox Marxist, his lineup is clearly left-wing. The difference between FHC (as he is called) and a good part of the Brazilian left (represented mainly by the PT) is that he, like Tony Blair in England and Bill Clinton in the US, opted for a third way between economic liberalism and more explicit socialism. In other words, FHC understood, along with leading PSDB leaders, that the Washington Consensus is called a consensus for good reason: there is a set of economic truths (pejoratively called neo-liberals) that are no longer the subject of debate. FHC followed these ideas, but he was heavily opposed by the PT for this.

Since the founding of the PT, in the late 1970s, Lula’s speech was quite radical, explicitly wishing to transform Brazil into a large Cuba. But Lula himself surrendered to the Washington Consensus in the early 2000s, and only then was he able to be elected president. Once in office, however, Lula commanded one of the greatest corruption scandals in world history. In addition, his historical links to the left were never erased. Although in his first term economic policy was largely liberal, this trend changed in his second term and in the presidency of his successor, Dilma Rousseff.

Today Brazil is still living in an economically difficult period, but an ironic result of more than a decade of left-wing government (especially the PT) is the strengthening of conservative and libertarian groups in Brazil. In the elections from 2002 to 2014 it was virtually impossible to identify candidates clearly along these lines. In this year’s election, we expected several candidates to explicitly identify themselves as right-wing. Jair Bolsonaro, the favorite in contention, is not historically a friend of the free market, but his more recent statements demonstrate that more and more he leans in this direction.

It is possible that in 2018 Brazil will not yet elect an explicitly libertarian president. But even so, the economic transformations initiated by FHC seem now to be vindicated. Only with the strengthening of the Internet did Brazilians have real access to conservative and libertarian ideas. With that, one of the most important political phenomena in Brazil in the last decade is the discovery of these ideas mainly by young people, and it is these young people who now cry for a candidate who defends their ideas. Bolsonaro seems to be the closest to this, although there are others willing to defend similar economic policy. After more than a decade of governments on the left, it seems that Brazil is finally going through a well-deserved right turn.

Brazilian senator Gleisi Hoffmann sends weird message to “Arab World”

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Politics , , , ,

Earlier this week, Brazilian senator Gleisi Hoffmann, president of the Worker’s Party (of the jailed former president Lula da Silva), sent a message to “the Arab World” through Al Jazeera TV to, in her words, “denounce that Lula is a political prisoner.” Hoffmann blames the Brazilian judiciary system, Globo TV (a major mass media in Brazil), American and European oil companies, and even the US Department of State for Lula’s arrest. At the end of the video, she invites everyone (I assume she means everyone in the “Arab World”) to join her in the fight to free Lula.

Hoffmann’s message is very weird, to say the least. What is she expecting? An Arab intervention in Brazil to free Lula? If that is so, she is committing high treason. To say the least, the Worker’s Party is a bad joke. If Lula needs foreign intervention, then how can Hoffmann say that he enjoys full support in his country? The truth is that Lula is history. I would very much like to stop writing about this. But it seems that, while people like Hoffmann are still in power, there is work to do.

Brazil-Africa Relations, Now and Then

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi History , , , ,

The first academic paper I ever published was about Brazil-Africa Relations, approximately from the 1960s to the 2000s. The main point of the article was to compare three moments of Brazilian Foreign Policy Towards Africa: the Independent Foreign Policy of the Early 1960s; the Foreign Policy of the latter Military Governments (late 1970s) and the Foreign Policy of the Lula administration (2003-2011). My main conclusion was that the foreign policy towards Africa of these three moments was very similar. Although some would exalt Lula’s foreign policy as something extraordinary, the truth, as I saw it, was that it was very well grounded in a tradition of Brazilian Foreign Policy.

Today I feel somewhat ashamed of that paper. I failed to highlight the irony: the leftist government of Lula had a foreign policy strikingly similar to that of the (supposedly) far-right military regime. The information, to be sure, is all there. One has simply to come to this obvious conclusion.

The foreign policy of Lula and Dilma was indeed very similar to that of Ernesto Geisel and João Batista Figueiredo, the last two generals to be presidents of Brazil, and not only regarding Africa. Dilma’s economic policy was extremely similar to that of Geisel, the same policy that, by the way, led Brazil to the hyperinflation of the 1980s and early 1990s.

It is definitely ironic. The Workers Party began as an opposition to the military government in Brazil. Dilma was a terrorist guerrilla warrior who fought against that regime (and never publicly apologized for that). However, once in power, they became very similar to their enemies. I’ll leave the readers to come to their own conclusions about this. But regarding Africa: I wasn’t able to continue my research. But I’m still very interested in that continent. Brazil is geographically and culturally very similar to many African nations. I believe there are great opportunities for mutual aggrandizement. But “mutual” is not what I saw in my research. I saw Brazil being hypocritical: The US is (in the sick mind of some leftist Brazilian politicians and diplomats) imperialist towards Brazil; therefore, Brazil will be imperialist towards Africa. I hope that a more market-friendly Brazil will be able to do something different.

Is it always wrong to be angry?

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

Recently it was brought to my attention a text by a Brazilian journalist “chocked with the anger the Brazilian middle-class has for Lula,” evidenced in the celebrations over Lula’s imprisonment. Honestly, I couldn’t finish reading it because I have better things to do, but in the first lines, she questions how people can be so angry and at the same time rejoicing while Brazil goes through such a turbulent moment. In her understanding, Lula represented the aspirations of millions of Brazilians, and these aspirations are now failing.

Ironically, I believe I know where her frustration comes from. Marxism is nothing but a Christian heresy.  Marx belongs to the group of 19th-century intellectuals who declared that God is dead. However, Marx was not able to get rid of all the Christian ethos. He simply transformed the working class into the suffering Messiah, the socialist intellectuals (like himself) into prophets and the future communist society into Paradise. Classical liberalism has its roots in Christianism, and Marxism is one step further away from it.

One of the most basic Christian teachings (expressed by Jesus himself) is “love your enemies.” Maybe this doesn’t sound controversial today, but it certainly was in 1st century Palestine. My understanding is that, as a deformed form of Christianity, Marxism is questioning how people in Brazil are failing to love Lula, their enemy.

However, Jesus didn’t simply say “love your enemy.” He went on to explain what he meant by love. Love in a Christian sense is less a feeling (although it is also a feeling) and more an attitude. It is mostly to follow the 10 commandments in our relationship with God and with other people.

The love Marxists preach lacks definition and as so lacks meaning. Therefore it is open to abuse. The love Christians preach is deep and complex, and not always easy to understand or to put into practice. But it is certainly not shallow. It is possible, Biblically speaking, to love your enemy and at the same time rejoice with justice.

Some may argue that this is not necessarily due to Christianity. Some philosophical school that predates Christianism (such as stoicism) preached something similar. I’m not going to argue about that. I’m not doing the most scholarly argument here, so you can’t take it or leave it.

Some may argue that the journalist I’m referring to is not a Marxist. To those, I quote John Maynard Keynes (who was not always a very good economist, but sometimes was very accurate in his observations about life):

Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

As a Christian, I don’t hate Lula and I don’t rejoice in his suffering. But I’m certainly rejoicing with justice. It may be hard to understand or to accept, but while I love my enemy I don’t necessarily approve his actions. And I certainly don’t consider my enemy my friend. It’s complex. As C.S. Lewis put it “people who have never been to Narnia find these things hard to understand.”

Why the left loves democracy

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

The left loves to talk about democracy. Brazil’s former president Lula da Silva is in jail. Finally. Leftists inside and outside Brazil call this a crime against democracy because the polls were showing that in the upcoming October elections Lula would be elected president. The people wanted Lula president, and a judge, Sergio Moro, against the will of the majority, jailed Lula.

I will consent to this argument. Maybe Lula was going to be elected in October (although I have serious doubts about it). Would this be democratic? Maybe. In its most pure form, democracy is the rule of the majority. A good picture of this is three wolves and a sheep voting on what they are going to have for dinner. Leftists in power (or hoping to be in power) love this.

A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of Government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions. — James Madison, Federalist No. 10

Leftism = Victim blaming

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Law , , , ,

Trying his best to become a martyr, former President Lula didn’t surrender to the police as it was stipulated by judge Sergio Moro.

Lula and his gang stole billions of dollars from the Brazilians. Now, all of a sudden, the left is worried about the rule of law.

Lula wanted to surrender Brazil to the interests of Foro de São Paulo, a supranational organization whose aim is to transform Latin America into a new USSR. Now, all of sudden, the left blames judge Sergio Moro for destabilizing Brazil’s democracy.

The only faction responsible for Brazil’s predicament is Lula and his gang. Thanks, judge Sergio Moro and his team for giving Brazilians a glimpse of hope.

A glorious day in Brazil

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Politics , , , , , ,

A glorious day in Brazil: former president Lula da Silva expected to be sent to jail soon.

Contrary to what the Washington Post says, there is no “political chaos” in Brazil. Former president Lula was ordered to jail, plunging Brazil into cosmos ahead of a presidential election.

Contrary to the Guardian, most Brazilians don’t hold any affection for Lula. Lula had support while he was able to feed the poor. Many poor people are already migrating their votes to Jair Bolsonaro.

Also contrary to the Guardian, Brazilian democracy is not connected to Lula. The country’s democracy will be alive and well without him. As for the “parliamentarians, academics and others” who say “Lula should be allowed to stand in the presidential elections,” please, be my guest: take him to run in your country.

A good day for Brazil, Latin America, and the world!

Brazil top court delays decision on blocking prison for ex-president Lula

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Law , , , , ,

Brazil’s Supreme Court decided that leftist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva cannot be sent to prison for a corruption conviction until he exhausts all possible appeals. About that:

“It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood: if they be repealed or revised before they are promulg[at]ed, or undergo such incessant changes, that no man who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be tomorrow.” – James Madison (16 March 1751 – 28 June 1836), fourth President of the United States (1809–1817), co-author, with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, of the Federalist Papers, and traditionally regarded as the Father of the United States Constitution.

“Brazil is not for beginners.” – Antônio Carlos Jobim (January 25, 1927 – December 8, 1994), also known as Tom Jobim, Brazilian composer, pianist, songwriter, arranger, and singer. Widely considered as one of the great exponents of Brazilian music.